Jordan has supported the Zio-American imperialists in every possible way for decades, got an embarrassing bupkus for it, and now will be punished by Salman for not taking the ultra-Zionist line of the Saudis: "Is Jordan paying the price for Jerusalem criticism?".

"A Wreck of a Week for Pro-US Allies, A Hell of a Week for Iran" (Anastasov).

Turns out the good people of Alabama aren't into the child sex stuff as much as we thought. The creeper at the mall story was the most choice!

"Russia-gate’s Litany of Corrections" (Parry). The best part of all this is that if there is any wrongdoing it is all from Obama and Clinton. I think they resurrected the 'grabees' partly to help in Alabama, but mostly because the #Russiagate line of attack is starting to backfire.

"Public Enemy No. 1: Walls Closing In On Peter Strzok As Questions Arise Over His Involvement In FISA Application" (Durden):

". . . that brings us back to the key question surrounding Peter Strzok...why exactly was he fired from the Trump investigation?

As it turns out, Representative Jim Jordan (R-OH) has an interesting theory on that question which he shared during his questioning of FBI Director Chris Wray last week. To summarize, Jordan's theory is that Strzok received the controversial "Trump Dossier" from the Clinton campaign then went to the FISA courts where he passed it off as a legitimate piece of intelligence in an effort to obtain the warrants necessary to effectively spy on the Trump campaign."

"The Litvinenko inquiry – a legal critique and alternative view" (Mercouris). I like when the institutional PR set-up lumbers on to its inevitable conclusion years after everybody has forgotten what the propaganda was for.

"What everybody got wrong about that viral video of a starving polar bear". Headline is, of course, very misleading.

"Although Myanmar had fair elections in 2015, the military is still in the driving seat with three important ministries in its hands. What is happening is completely out of her hands. So, she really cannot do much in terms of ordering anyone. The military takes orders from its commander-in-chief, not from any elected leader.

She has to tread a really delicate balance. Let’s say she came out for the Rohingyas. It would be political suicide. It is clear where most of her electorate stands on the matter. If she came out in support of the hardline Arakan National Party, she would get flak from the Western press. If she does not do anything, she would get flak too, as she has. It is an extremely delicate situation for her.

The only thing she could have done but has not is that she could have gone to Sittwe [the capital of Rakhine state] and met some elected politicians. She does not like the leaders of the Arakan National Party, so she will not do that. But she had to just show that there is a civilian space in Rakhine too. She did not have to say anything, she could have gone to a hospital, met people from all communities. In the process, she could have widened a very limited civilian space."

RT, under great pressure, keeps upping its game: "I spent a week reading the Guardian, so you didn’t have to" (MacDonald) (it pays to increase your word power: numpty):

"After a week, you quickly learn the Guardian’s worldview: Donald Trump, straight men, Christmas, and Brexit are all considered to be really bad. Meanwhile, Vladimir Putin and Russia are opprobrious, malevolent and reprehensible. Good things include unfettered immigration, mixed-sex toilets, and Tony Blair."

"Dustin Hoffman assaulted a young actress on a nightly basis during a Broadway run".

The concept of sex addiction was invented so male celebrities could be 'cured' of it by having sex with children: "Today's Blind Items - The Church" (CDaN). Guesses (links removed, but they are referring to this):

CDaN has been crazy lately, with long blinds on Old Hollywood, and a massive posting on Hugh Heffner's sex tape collection (here, nsfw, with guesses including Henry Kissinger and George Stephanopoulos)!

Tuesday, December 12, 2017

"Russia-gate’s Litany of Corrections" (Parry). "CNN refuses to reveal names of “multiple sources” who spread Wikileaks-Trump fake news story" (Christoforou). Even after The Clarification, the idea still exists that Fox News lies intentionally, but this constant stream of lies from the mainstream media is just well-meaning, overworked journalists making understandable and honest mistakes!

There is a conspiracy between the IC and the mainstream media to remove
Trump. Fortunately, both are as incompetent as you always supposed. "Ex-Spy Chief Admits Role In 'Deep State' Intelligence War On Trump" (Durden). "Senior DOJ Official's Wife Worked At Oppo Research Firm That Produced "Trump Dossier"" (Durden).

"Bad Moon Rising" (Giraldi). Too pessimistic. Do I need to reset my estimation of Trump's common sense based on one really stupid decision on Jerusalem that he was forced into making?

"Jerusalem"
(West). The bright side is that Trump has killed gradual,
surreptitious, incrementalist Zionism, and ended any possible claim that the Americans
are 'honest brokers'.

"Op-Ed: The pundits were wrong about Assad and the Islamic State. As usual, they're not willing to admit it". Fairly amazing. I guess Trump will be having Assad over for lunch at Mar-a-Lago soon.

"Russia's Military Withdrawal Will Prompt President Assad To "Compromise"" (Korybko) or "Why Assad Believes That Syria Would Not Survive a Transition to a Federal System" (Minin)?

"IsraelGate: The Arrogance of Jewish Power in the United States" (Giraldi). "Should Jared Kushner be fired?" (Alexis). But Weiss, who is full of shit, is still peddling his American-Khazar-protecting nonsense that the Jerusalem decision further separates American and Israeli Jews!

"Why Is There No “Saudi-Gate”?" (Marcetic). Looks like an attempt to deflect attention from the real problem of foreign influence.

"WATCH as the Lebanese president says Israel will not attack Lebanon because of Hezbollah" (Antonopoulos). Does he know something we don't? Is it possible that the Jared/Bibi/Salman conspiracy plans for an attack on Lebanon have been postponed as the Israelis think they will have their hands full murdering uppity Palestinians?

"Venezuela, that "dictatorship" country that holds three elections in a year". Orders of magnitude freer and fairer than, say, American elections. No contest. "Chavismo Triumphant in Municipal Elections: 15 Key Factors".

"Google hiring 10,000 reviewers to censor YouTube content". A hint at how seriously they take controlling what you might learn.

Monday, December 11, 2017

"The Hidden Hands Behind US Embassy Move to Jerusalem" (Madsen). Read the whole thing. Rabbis, organized crime, Irving Moskowitz, extreme right-wing Israeli politics, the 'Dwek clan', the Kushner family, it is about as bad as you can imagine. Americans are apparently powerless to stop or even slow down all these criminal conspiracies.

"Dionne and Shields ignore the Adelson in the room" (Weiss). Christian Zionists are the fall guy. The general political positions of the Christian right have shifted considerably in the years since the Bush Administration, largely due to the fact that their communities have been greatly damaged by the various social consequences of the numerous Wars For The Jews.

"Dozens injured near U.S. Embassy in Lebanon protesting Trump’s decision on Jerusalem". Note carefully how this conveys the Kushner narrative, that opponents to Zionism, and particularly the Palestinians, are completely impotent, and just have to meekly accept whatever crumbs the magnanimous Khazars decide to leave them. This is the facts-on-the-ground premise of racist Zionism (aka 'muscle Zionism').

"The Delusions of Washington-Riyadh Ruling Elite and the Journalists Who Feed Them" (Silverstein). The usual version of the same trick is to write as if a certain set of assumptions is an undeniable and unalterable truth.

"Do You Hold Dual Citizenship? You Can Serve in Congress–but not the Israeli Knesset!" (Edmondson).

"Behind Turkish Arrest Warrant for Ex CIA Graham Fuller" (Engdahl). Fuller is connected to Iran-Contra (supposedly coming up with the daffy idea), the storage of Gülen by the CIA in the US (by arranging for Gülen's green card directly in the face of wise American government opposition), the Boston marathon bombing (his daughter at one time was married to 'Uncle Ruslan', the uncle of the Tsarnaev brothers), and now the attempted Gülen coup (through alleged hand's-on participation in Turkey). If he was any good at what he does, he wouldn't be leaving his fingerprints all over the place.

"Report: 44,000 ‘unknown’ military personnel stationed around the world" (about the size of the entire Canadian military and civilian support staff). "U.S. Military Capabilities and Forces for a Dangerous World" (RAND). The only problem facing Americans is the ridiculously low military budget of the USA. Luckily this tragedy can be fixed with laughably small annual increases in spending: "The nation could avoid major force cuts and achieve the objectives outlined above by increasing defense spending by $20 billion to $40 billion per year on a sustained basis."

"Decameron:
Let The Building Begin -- In The USA". Americans somehow continue to
believe that there is no cost to being the international assholes. MAGA
would be listing all the military bases and Wars For The Jews, and
their annual costs, terminating them, and using that money for the
benefit of Americans.

Part of The Clarification is that the censorship now mostly comes from the 'left' (not that PEN's hands are clean either).

It appears that American liberals are never going to be able to assimilate the revelations of The Clarification: "I Don't Think the Moral High Ground Exists Anymore" (Pierce).

"Epic Media Failure, but they blame Trump for calling them out" (The Daily Bell). It's true! Weigel straight-up lied, came up with an explanation involving someone who denies having had anything to do with it (or even any recent contact with Weigel), withdrew the lie, but somehow it is Trump's fault for noticing the pattern?! Of course, the deep problem is they can't criticize Trump on the merits of his policies as the 'donors' like his policies, so they just keep making stuff up.

"The
U.S. Media Suffered Its Most Humiliating Debacle in Ages: Now Refuses
All Transparency Over What Happened" (Greenwald). Note Marshall's nuke!

"Does Trump Want a New Middle East War?" No. He let Kushner go off and do his settler thing as Trump was Ivanka-whipped, but once the shit hits the fan - and it will - he'll pull the classic Trumpian dick move and claim he had nothing to do with it and Jared was out on his own lark.

Quite powerful stuff: "Strzok-Gate And The Mueller Cover-Up" (Mercouris). The Mueller investigation is just a continuation of the Democrat Dossier machinations, and Strzok had to go as his participation was making that fact too obvious.

"Cognitive Rot and the Steele Dossier" (emptywheel). This starts off well enough, but ends with "Just as important, we need to retain the habit of facts and evidence." (I don't understand the italics), preceded, only two paragraphs before, by the comic Trump Derangement Syndrome of:

"As I’ve said repeatedly, we don’t need the dossier to believe dark things about Trump’s relations with Russians; public reports substantiate that darkness, and darker things are to come."

I'd like to grind the 'skeptics' and deniers up and use them for polar bear food: "As World Warms, Heart-Breaking Video Shows What It Looks Like When a Polar Bear Starves".

"Erdogan Calls Israel "Terrorist State That Kills Children", An Angry Netanyahu Responds" (Durden). Note that Bibi doesn't deny the charge, but just quibbles about whether Erdoğan has the right to make it. It will be interesting to see how the desire of the Turkish oligarchs to make money off deals with Israel and Levantine gas weighs against the fact that Turkey is the only truly Muslim state left standing in the area.

Stinktank news: "State Department pays think tank nearly $1 million to work with Venezuelan opposition". Note the underlying assumption that Maduro is not democratically elected (a recurring theme throughout mainstream journalism and State Department lies about Venezuela, going back to Hugo Chavez, who was, of course, a dictator just like Maduro, while the coup plotters were/are the paragons of democratic virtue)!

"The New Great Game moves from Asia-Pacific to Indo-Pacific" (Escobar). The use of Japan to attempt to counter Chinese success.

Sunday, December 10, 2017

"Jared Kushner is wreaking havoc in the Middle East" (Bayoumi). Trump, totally Ivanka'd, can't get rid of him, so the only constitutional way to stop this rolling disaster of supremacism and stupidity is to get rid of Trump.

But we all know the real #Resistance is retweeting snarky comments about Trump.

"Malaysian army "ready" to act in response to Trump's Jerusalem move".

"WaPo Reporter Tweets Picture Of Empty Trump Speech, Gets Called Out By Trump And Retracts" (Durden). The cumulative effect of all these 'mistakes' is starting to add up.

"Secretive upstate group had Gillibrand’s dad on payroll". "Legendary columnist, Richard Johnson on Sen. Gillibrand & NXIVM in NY Post". Another kind of branding: "Gillibrand is subject of debate over Franken, Clinton".

Bill Binney interview by Jeff Schechtman (of course, Binney is still a True Believer, so we don't get into intentional malfeasance):

"For example, in terrorist attacks here in Europe or back in the United States, they basically come in after the fact and say, “Yeah, we knew this guy was a bad guy,” or “he had all these connections and we knew he was on our watch list or something and we were concerned about him,” but they weren’t following them close enough to be able to stop the attacks.
The reasons they weren’t was of course because their policy of taking bulk acquisition of data on everybody on the planet, which meant you had to dive into this ocean to try to find the fish, you know? That’s the problem. That’s basically what they’re still doing today and that’s why they’re still having trouble stopping anything."

and:

"The way we developed things, we did them very efficiently. That was one of our big mistakes. So It didn’t cost a lot of money. The major managers there at NSA didn’t really like that. It didn’t support a large organization. It didn’t support a big budget. Solving the problem was not their main issue. Also their concern was making sure that the agencies and all their contracts increased year-after-year so they had a bigger budget to manage. That was the big thing for them I think."

"Toronto Fears Assuaged: Putin Will Not Invade!"(Butler). Sweet Jesus, Teh Stupid! One of the greatest tragedies in Canadian history was accepting Munk as a refugee from Hungary back in the 50s. Actually, that whole lot of refugees has been a horrible blight on Canada.

"Secret Buyer Of $450 Million Leonardo Da Vinci Painting Revealed" (Durden). Salman's gift to MbZ, presumably for all his 'sage' advice on 'modernizing', diversification, Qatar, Yemen, etc (see also)! "6 Questions for an Art Historian About Leonardo’s “Salvator Mundi”". Odd choice of gift from one Muslim dauphin to another, unless it is a statement that the recipient is the savior of the world!

"Four For Friday - Forget Me Not" (CDaN). The guesses are either the greatest American political scientist Mel Gibson (always the guess for any blind involving a creepster ever since he accurately and incisively described world politics) and David Copperfield (although Copperfield has no known connection to an Asian island; the Canadian fashion entrepreneur Peter Nygard is intriguing, although, again, his island is Caribbean).

Saturday, December 09, 2017

"Wedding Cakes & Freedom, Again", I thought this was good common sense which most people would support, and a little bit Marxist in its concern for the product of your labor.

Also good common sense, the Pamela Anderson Law School definition of consent: "Pamela Anderson says Harvey Weinstein victims should have 'known what they were getting into'". Jurors are going to find this convincing too, which is why I doubt we'll see any successful prosecutions of most of these predators (of course the under-age predators, where consent isn't an issue, have bigger problems).

"Arizona Congressman Resigns for — Wait, What Was That Again?" The problem was he has something against turkey basters, the tools of the Devil.

"Dylan Farrow Slapped At Hollywood For Protecting Woody Allen From The #MeToo Movement". The biggest names have still slipped the noose.

The UN actually had a special Security Council meeting on President Kushner's slouching towards Jerusalem, reported all over the world, but good luck finding any mention of it in the US mainstream media (though you will find lots of reports on what Nikki said there), except, bizarrely, at PBS, usually a barren desert of no-facts.

"In a shock move, Brazil declares it will not follow Trump's move and recognize Jerusalem as Israel's capital". "Florida rally cheers when Republican predicts Trump’s Jerusalem embassy decision may usher in Armageddon". Always bearing in mind that Trump could care less about the Christian Zionists, and these stories are intended to protect the guilty.

"In Washington, Venezuela’s plan to create a ‘Bitcoin’ seen as a sign of desperation". A bold backdoor to bringing MMT to Venezuela?

What a wonderful world we live in: "Germany Receives New Refugees: Twitter Shitlibs Fleeing Groyper Persecution" (Sol). Can you imagine trying to make sense of this twenty (or even ten, or even two) years ago?:

"Liberals have recently come up with a new, innovative jimmie protection technology in order to preserve the integrity of their feels.

Triggered to all hell by Twitter’s inability to stem the flood of Alt-Right groyper accounts, they’ve been forced to trudge through the Twitter-sphere neck deep in Nazi frogs, barely able to gasp for air.

How can they attain the sweet, sweet utopia of totalitarian thought control they so badly crave?

"SEC Associate Director And Wife Of Fired Anti-Trump FBI Agent Appears To Scrub Facebook Page Of Obama-Clinton Likes" (ZeroPointNow). The extremely Democrat partisan nature of all of #Russiagate keeps popping up in different ways.

Now this is interesting: "Obama Appointed Judge Mysteriously Recuses Himself From Michael Flynn Case" (Durden). "THE BIG UGLY – Why U.S. District Court Judge Rudolph Contreras Recusal From Mike Flynn Case is a Big Deal…" (note the very detailed timeline following this excerpt):

"Judge Contreras was in the position of approving FISA warrants at the time when FBI Deputy Head of Counterintelligence, FBI Agent Peter Strzok was assembling the underlying information for the FISA warrant used against candidate Trump.

There is a very real possibility that Judge Contreras signed off on the FISA warrant in October 2016 that initiated the counterintelligence wiretapping and surveillance of the Trump campaign. That wiretapping and surveillance ultimately led to the questioning of Michael Flynn; the consequence of which brings Flynn to Contreras courtroom."

We all sit around waiting for the latest Hopkins: "The Year of the Headless Liberal Chicken":

"Now that Robert Mueller has proved that Trump colluded with Vladimir Putin by obstructing an investigation by Comey into Michael Flynn’s lying to the FBI about not colluding with the Russian ambassador on behalf of Israel at Kushner’s behest, the dominoes are surely about to fall."

"Police File Exposes Holes In The Investigation Into US Death Of Putin’s Media Czar" (Leopold, etc). Who knows what happened, but this story reveals nothing of importance and is obviously just more piling on #Russiagate using the headline as a weapon.

"The Assassination of John F. Kennedy and the Plot Against Cuba" (Escalante). Isn't it interesting that they appear to have sent both Oswald and an unconvincing Oswald impersonator to Mexico City to set up the assassination-Cuba-Russia connection?

Friday, December 08, 2017

Buchanan on Saakashvili, recalling the recent history of neocon-proposed WWIIIs: "The Nutball the Neocons Wanted in NATO":

"Do we really want to cede to folks of the temperament of Mikhail Saakashvili an ability to instigate a war with a nuclear-armed Russia, which every Cold War president was resolved to avoid, even if it meant accepting Moscow’s hegemony in Eastern Europe all the way to the Elbe?

Watching Saakashvili losing it in the streets of Kiev like some blitzed college student should cause us to reassess the stability of all these allies to whom we have ceded a capacity to drag us into war."

". . . Maguire told donors that Obama administration holdovers were withholding information from President Trump, and H.R. McMaster - a protégé of former CIA director David Petraeus - authorized a spying operation on members of the Trump family as well as Steve Bannon, and then sent the gathered intel to an international facility owned by George Soros."

This might be true, but it sounds like Prince PR promulgated by The Intercept - while appearing to be critical of Prince! - to justify the private Trump Intelligence/Assassination Agency Prince and Maguire want to set up. Bannon and his crew have had it in for McMaster, connecting him to Soros (note the uncropped cartoon!).

There is actually a genre of apologias which insist that our neocolonial enterprise will work, as it is 'different' from all the other ones that have failed: "Mali is France’s Afghanistan, But With a Difference".

The Helmer link from yesterday on the investigation of the possible Khazar ritual sacrifice of the Russian royal family (!) is working again.

"Trump's Jerusalem own-goal is a victory for the world" (Flores). Intellectually and morally solid.

Sounds like a conflict to me: "Turkey links U.S. judge in sanctions case to wanted cleric".

"How Russia-gate Rationalizes Censorship" (Lauria). HuffPost, FAIR, Gary Sick, and the ACLU are all in on the conspiracy to censor criticism of Russiagate. Putin/Trump Derangement Syndrome is a terrible disease.

More mischief from Sailer:

"How Many Black Male Democrat Bigshots Will be Left When This Is Over?" (the Democrats are already having trouble finding a Conyers replacement as all the prospective candidates have the same, um, problem!);

the modern classic piece on 'not shy' Toback, not to mention its rambunctious comments, referring to this bizarre quasi-celebration of sleaziness from not that long ago which might have well been the Middle Ages: "The original pick-up artist";

"There Is No Inner Party: Obama Had His 18-Year-Old Daughter Intern for Harvey Weinstein" (despite all the resources and insider information available to him, Barry was utterly clueless) and "Harvey, Barack, and Hillary" ("If Hillary had been elected, Weinstein would be at this moment chasing starlets around the Lincoln Bedroom."); and

"And Then They Came for Two More Public Radio Oldsters" (we should be able to morally and legally distinguish between the outright rapists - Weinstein, Lauer, Singer - the sexual assaulters who probably don't reach the level of being charged with a crime even if their actions were criminal assault - Franken, who went down like the asshole captain of his asshole ship - and the persistent verbal pests who would normally be disciplined for creating a toxic work environment, but don't reach any level of criminality).

Thursday, December 07, 2017

I've been pondering Al Franken's SNL career. I mainly remember him as Stuart Smalley, an extremely effeminate man with self-esteem issues couched in new-age jargon, and, well . . . that was the joke! This wasn't that long ago (though the 'jokes' now sound ancient), and it seemed like he was featured constantly with minor variations on the same slim theme, and even a movie, but can you imagine him trying to construct an act like that today?! He'd have more luck coming out in blackface. The best part is that his party tried to hold on to him for dear life despite the allegations piling up, and that this party's sole remaining possible attraction to its supporters is that it is the virtue-signaling identity politics party!

The answers to this revealed gossip blind item from CDaN are Ashley Judd and Bill Clinton.

Comment by Katniss Everdeen at Naked Capitalism on Whitefish, Montana.

"It was not the US which defeated ISIS: foes of the US defeated ISIS" (Angry Arab). Wow!

"This his how the New York Times described this racist Zionist" (Angry Arab). How, exactly, do you live in open sewage? Perhaps he's referring to 'skunk water'.

"Torquemada Makes A Comeback — The Spanish Inquisition Has Arrived In Moscow" (Helmer). The title is weird - it has nothing to do with the content of the piece - and Helmer doesn't seem to approve, but this degree of 'blood libel' popping up at this time is an impressively crazed provocation.

"Useful Idiots Are Still Idiots" (West). Short bio of Saakashvili, who I believe is still at large.

Curious eruption of truth where you'd least expect to see it: "Did American Missile Defense Fail in Saudi Arabia?".

The Khazar plan for decades was to steal a country house by house, and plot by plot, all the while buying time by pretending to be ready to negotiate with the Palestinians, with America as the 'honest broker'. Nobody actually believed it, but this was the operative narrative for decades. Kushner has now blown this carefully constructed scheme into tiny pieces, and caused all the rest of the world to loudly proclaim that the status of Jerusalem isn't final until negotiations with the Palestinians are concluded. While the 'American' Khazars are patting themselves on the back for a politician well beshekeled, and another demand on their list checked off, they don't seem to have realized that their strategy is now gone, and all their stolen gains to date are back on the table. The Clarification brought by Trump continues to work its magic.

"Status of women's testimony in Islam". Still better than the Democratic Party, who require at least six additional witnesses to ensure that hysterical bitch isn't lying: "Seventh woman accuses Al Franken of sexual misconduct" and "Full list: Schumer and majority of Democratic senators call for Franken to resign".

JFK could have fired his Attorney General, RFK, if he wanted to, if he thought he had to. It would not have been pleasant, it would have resulted in years of difficult family gatherings, but he could have done it. Trump can't fire Kushner. It doesn't matter what Kushner does, Trump can't fire him as it would hurt his precious daughter. Trump can't even control Kushner, or limit his influence. In fact, Kushner's massive financial problems are only being held in stay as along as he gets to swan around Washington, Tel Aviv and Riyadh. The whole Kushner family would be ruined if he is forced out. This situation is unique in American politics (though if you wanted to get deeper into the weeds you could argue that JFK should have fired RFK for the aggressive right-wing foreign policy RFK was scheming, possibly behind JFK's back).

Watergate was a conspiracy to remove a man that the highest American mucky-mucks felt was dangerous to the Republic (in retrospect, and given the following Presidents, that was terrible judgment of the mucky-mucks). They used Nixon's innate paranoia to trick him into a cover-up (there are also sex blackmail aspects, and even JFK assassination aspects, that are still obscure as they are so dangerous), which was then manipulated by the media to remove him.

Although the Clintonistas have been floating the idea that Trump is too mentally unstable, even insane, to be President, nobody believes it. In fact, Trump has been a rather cautious, bog-standard, American Republican President, with fewer wars than most Presidents. Even the awful environmental and tax stuff is standard American politics (the environmental negligence is effectively just an extension of Barry's do-nothingness, and I can guarantee that as much as Democrats wail about the tax stuff, if they ever get their act together and find themselves in power, they will do nothing to undo the Trump damage). If you ignore all the bloviation, Trump's actual record of action has done nothing to create fears that the country is in dangerous hands. If anything, he is too sane (part of the larger theory that the Clintonista cries that Trump doesn't properly represent Americans is true only insofar as Trump is far too moral a man to represent the monsters that are Americans).

Until now. Don't get me wrong, the Jerusalem decision is popular all across the swamp. The hogs all eat from the same shekel-trough. The problem for the mucky-mucks is structural. In effect, the American Empire has again been forced into marginalizing itself - the entire rest of the world, and even members of Trump's own cabinet, recoiled in horror at the sheer stupidity of the decision (which already has substantial consequences) - all at the hands of a small number of Chabad extremists, 'European' Jewish slumlords who now exclusively run American foreign policy ("a bunch of Orthodox Jews who have no idea about anything"), fronted by the creepy Kushner, and operating solely on the basis of Khazar supremacism, looking for 'wins' for the settler movement. It doesn't even matter if the 'wins' make any sense for Israel, it is just an exercise in asserting Khazar dominance over the American government, a process of working through a checklist of arbitrary demands, and congratulating each other at synagogue as each one is checked off. So now American foreign policy is an international laughingstock run by a man who cannot possibly be removed, no matter how obviously stupid his decisions are. This is obviously a recipe for disaster. If the mucky-mucks are paying attention, Trump has now, for the first time, given them reason to act.

Wednesday, December 06, 2017

"Weinstein’s Complicity Machine". The 'well-oiled machine'. Keeping Harvey out of jail and out of the mainstream media was a massive operation, the gossip equivalent of putting a man on the moon.

"Yemen's Saleh: A political murder mystery". Big debate over where they capped him.

"Who Killed Yemen's Former President Ali Abdullah Saleh?" The (Iranian) theory that he was killed to prevent revelation of the big UAE/Israeli coup conspiracy plan for Yemen!

The latest Ziowahhabican treachery: "Changes in the Military Situation in Syria: the New Position" (Lvov):

"The Syrians have clearly decided not to attempt to liberate Abu Kamal and are now trying to form up together with the column that is extending from Mayadin and is unable to cross the Euphrates. There is some logic in this: Abu Kamal is considered to be liberated territory and so it is possible to focus on more pressing dangers. There are not many militants in the city and along the river, but it is also true that the Syrians and their Shi’ite allies do not have enough troops in this region.

ISIS’ strengthening of its position here is clearly connected with the fact that almost a thousand of its militants (and maybe more) who were engaged in fighting the SDF on the left bank of the Euphrates have now been freed up. And something entirely predictable has happened there. Now ISIS has entered into a “cease-fire” with the Kurds and it is now able to regroup its forces – something the ISIS terrorists can do better than anyone else in this war.

On 29 November ISIS and the Kurds from the SDF signed a cease-fire agreement for a month, renewable, and declared that they intend it to stay in effect for approximately six months. The text of the agreement is available, and it has been confirmed as accurate by the most neutral parties in the region. Under the agreement ISIS will receive a corridor through the Kurdish zone and the ability to regroup its forces and concentrate them against a smaller number of opponents: Shi’ites, the Free Syrian Army, and Russian forces. Half a year will be plenty of time for ISIS to get its breath back and complete its evacuation without rushing things. The cease-fire could not have been concluded without the USA, of course. Given the escalation of the power struggle within the White House, only the CIA are in a position to “look after” the agreement between the Kurds and ISIS. The goal of these ‘curators’ is to be able to exert more pressure on Iran, Turkey and, indirectly, on Russia.

It is entirely possible that the “curators” are among those who are preparing a future confrontation with Iran that Saudi Arabia, without even trying to hide the fact, is seeking. That is why it is impossible to exclude Saudi interests (and, thus, Israeli interests) when considering this “cease-fire”. The Turks also are losing out as a result of the cease-fire. The Kurds are being enabled to transfer their forces from the South to the North and make Turkish expansion into Kurdish regions practically impossible. The “cease-fire” is thus a blow against the interests of all the members of the “Astana” coalition."

"And on top of everything else, a new player has appeared in the Syrian theatre of war: China. ‘Night Tigers’- Chinese anti-terrorism divisions – have arrived in the Syrian port of Tartus, as the Turkish journalist Mete Sohtaoğlu informs us. According to him these Chinese troops are already in the Syrian port of Tartus. Earlier there were reports that the Chinese Minister of Defence plans to send Chinese special forces to Syria (two well-known forces- the “Siberian Tigers” and the “Night Tigers”) to fight against terrorists from the East Turkestan Islamist movement. If that is true then it is now clear who may get the lion’s share of contracts in connection with the rebuilding of Syria."

"The Tangled Threads of Russia-gate" (Parry). The greater narrative of Trump as Putin's long-planned puppet sails through, untouched, despite the fact that each 'scoop' of minor functionaries arranging Russian contacts with Trump or his campaign undermines it.

"The Dog That Did Bark, But Just Once (So Far)" (Sailer). Sailer's point is that male homosexual sexual interest in teen-aged boys - the Mann/Visconti 'Death in Venice' stuff - is normal male homosexual behavior which has been whitewashed out by the PR campaign as it is unacceptable to the average person. I have no idea whether this is true, but the conspiracy angle that the 'normalization' of homosexuality is part of an organized media/entertainment campaign is undeniable. The 'liberal' shibboleth is that protecting an identifiable group from 'hate' and its perhaps violent repercussions is worth the risk to a group subject to possible predation.

"“Moneybull”: An Inquiry Into Media Manipulation" (Griffin). Interesting case study of how 'Hollywood' fixes the facts of the story told in a movie - which is supposed to be based on what actually happened - to subtly mold public opinion along certain lines.

"Gizmodo Echoes Naked Capitalism: “Don’t Buy Anyone an Echo”" (Smith). There is no chance - zero! - that all this recording isn't going directly to the NSA.

For those who say this Hollywood gossip doesn't apply to real-world victims: "Today's Blind Items - The Boys Club" (CDaN). Guesses (referring to "Bryan Singer, Gary Goddard Hit With New Sex Abuse Lawsuit"; see also the Travolta/Scientologist blind item and remember that Travolta has a spectacularly un-PC theory - almost mikepencean - of how, and by whom, he was 'turned'):

Tuesday, December 05, 2017

Tweets by Popehat on Polanski's enablers/apologists, and, given current circumstances, the twisty road they have to follow. It is a huge puzzle what most of these people might have in common! Also.

"MSNBC to Cut Ties With Sam Seder After Roman Polanski Rape Joke (Exclusive)". This does seem like an excuse to get rid of somebody whose politics was a bit too far left for the network.

"Bryan Singer Fired From Queen Biopic ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’". The joke in the gossip comments was that his 'illness' was carpal tunnel syndrome from writing all the settlement checks to his victims.

If people continue to use this to air old imagined slights, or snowflake discomfort, the whole thing is going to fall apart (i.e., we've come a long way from Weinstein): "And Then They Came for Some Paraplegic Public Radio SJW" (Sailer).

The talk from the big swinging dick guys is that the current atmosphere is dangerous for business, and women will simply have to be excluded from any positions where they can cause a problem by making an allegation.

"‘Who’s
Next?’: The Mysterious Blind-Item King Who Exposed Weinstein, Spacey,
and Lauer Before the Media". Many doubt that Enty is a lawyer, given
the fact that it is often difficult to find a coherent sentence in CDaN,
and there seems to be more than one Enty, and even more than one at a
time (varying standards on who is A-list, B-list, etc), but the track
record in outing various reprobates is impressive, obviously orders of
magnitude above the mainstream media, who cover up for these monsters.
There is a strong sympathy throughout CDaN for the actors who have to
put up with the people who run 'Hollywood'.

"Prosecutors: Manafort wrote op-ed with colleague in Russia". Don't get me wrong, I think Manafort's a crook. But shouldn't he have the right to defend himself? What's with a gag order? Of course, he probably could have picked a non-Russian to assist!

"For a month now there has been a standoff between pro-government Iraqi forces and Peshmerga forces at the Faysh Khabur border crossing, where the Kurdish export pipeline enters Turkey. Baghdad wants to assume control over all crossings to bring all northern exports, including from fields inside Kurdistan's uncontested border, under state control - and bring the KRG to its knees.

This would entail Baghdad agreeing in return to provide for the financial needs of the Kurdish provinces from federal coffers. In theory, an agreement is possible. But there's more at stake than just civil servants' salaries and funds for schools or roads.

For the KRG, to maintain a revenue stream independent of Baghdad's chokehold is an existential-level question. There is also the looming question of what happens to the KRG lenders, including Russia. Western companies may have little in the way of recourse, but there's no telling what tricks the Kremlin might have up its sleeve to collect on its awkwardly-timed investments in Kurdish black gold."

"D'OH! Mitch McConnell Killed All Corporate Tax Deductions In His Frenzy To Pass Tax Cuts". Obviously one of the main problems facing the US (and elsewhere) is income distribution, so another big tax grab by the 0.1% is obscene, but I find it very odd that the 'left' fails to notice the interesting big tax policy wonk decisions being made in this tax bill, essentially trying to start to isolate revenue collection from using tax policy to achieve other social policy objectives.

"Israeli Attacks Reported Near Damascus, Israeli Media Removes Story" (Ditz). The censorship of the story is interesting, as they are usually not shy about asserting the Khazar right to break international law with impunity.

"Ex-CIA analyst rejects Turkish claims of involvement in coup". Fuller was born in 1937.

There is only one tiny sliver of study where 'academic freedom' isn't protected, even by its most self-righteous defenders, who don't seem to get that not protecting the tiny sliver wrecks the whole concept: "Jackboots in The Canadian Academy. Freedom of Expression And Inquiry Under Threat … Again. University of Lethbridge, Alberta.".

Not The Onion: "A naked game of tag was filmed at a Nazi gas chamber. Survivors’ groups demand to know who gave the OK."

Monday, December 04, 2017

Taking out the trash: "Yemen's Houthi: Ali Abdulla Saleh killed for 'treason'". Read down for 'missile defense', the only thing standing between the Israelis and annihilation. I have to say it is nothing short of heartwarming to see a corrupt asshole who decided to take one last bribe to get his justly-earned comeuppance so decisively.

Much as I hate to admit it, Dershowitz is spot on in his analysis of Mueller and Flynn. Mueller's case is so weak he was reduced to charging his prospective star witness against Trump with lying, making him useless in a court as any defense lawyer will tear his credibility apart on cross examination.

". . . when a prosecutor has a cooperator who was an accomplice in a major criminal scheme, the cooperator is made to plead guilty to the scheme. This is critical because it proves the existence of the scheme. In his guilty-plea allocution (the part of a plea proceeding in which the defendant admits what he did that makes him guilty), the accomplice explains the scheme and the actions taken by himself and his co-conspirators to carry it out. This goes a long way toward proving the case against all of the subjects of the investigation.

That is not happening in Flynn’s situation. Instead, like Papadopoulos, he is being permitted to plead guilty to a mere process crime. A breaking report from ABC News indicates that Flynn is prepared to testify that Trump directed him to make contact with the Russians — initially to lay the groundwork for mutual efforts against ISIS in Syria. That, however, is exactly the sort of thing the incoming national-security adviser is supposed to do in a transition phase between administrations. If it were part of the basis for a “collusion” case arising out of Russia’s election meddling, then Flynn would not be pleading guilty to a process crime — he’d be pleading guilty to an espionage conspiracy.

Understand: If Flynn’s conversations with the Russian ambassador had evinced the existence of a quid pro quo collusion arrangement — that the Trump administration would ease or eliminate sanctions on Russia as a payback for Russia’s cyber-espionage against the Hillary Clinton campaign and the Democratic party — it would have been completely appropriate, even urgently necessary, for the Obama Justice Department to investigate Flynn. But if that had happened, Mueller would not be permitting Flynn to settle the case with a single count of lying to FBI agents. Instead, we would be looking at a major conspiracy indictment, and Flynn would be made to plead to far more serious offenses if he wanted a deal — cooperation in exchange for sentencing leniency.

To the contrary, for all the furor, we have a small-potatoes plea in Flynn’s case — just as we did in Papadopoulos’s case, despite extensive “collusion” evidence. Meanwhile, the only major case Mueller has brought, against former Trump-campaign chairman Paul Manafort and an associate, has nothing to do with the 2016 election. It is becoming increasingly palpable that, whatever “collusion” means, there was no actionable, conspiratorial complicity by the Trump campaign in the Kremlin’s machinations."

Flynn seems to be putting up with this nonsense, and even taking a few months of jail, in order to protect his son, who, lacking experience of the swamp, wasn't likely as adept at compartmentalizing power and power broking.

"Anti-Trump FBI Agent Fired From Mueller Probe Relied On Russian Farytales From Fusion GPS Dossier" (ZeroPointNow). "Brian Ross Suspended After False Michael Flynn Report, ABC Colleagues ‘Furious’" - he straight-up lied about the crucial timing point - how did he possibly think he would get away with it?!

Where did this bizarre idea come from that Mueller is some kind of prosecutorial genius? He just another mediocre Washington swamp-dwelling hack.

"The Media and the Myths of Trump" (Van Buren). The idea that Trump is literally insane - ironic, given that he's not the guy pushing for WWIII - isn't going to play well with the deplorables. The consequences of real insanity: "Slave Markets in ‘Liberated’ Libya and the Silence of the Humanitarian Hawks" (Clark).

I think any patriotic American would see Trump administration efforts to seek a rapprochement with Russia - a rapprochement which, despite all the sabre rattling, has actually occurred, with wonderful results - while avoiding WWIII, as a necessary part of MAGA, but the Khazars are, as you would expect, furious: "Taking Stock, Pt. 1: The Race for Russia". If there is any treason it is by the deadender Obamanauts trying to subvert Trump's progress towards peace and understanding.

Here's where it gets interesting: "Kushner Is Leaving Tillerson in the Dark on Middle East Talks, Sources Say" (Tillerson setting things ups so if Kushner is removed, Tillerson has a clean slate and can ignore all the problems created by Kushner-Salman; linking is iffy, so here's the Bloomberg url: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-12-01/kushner-is-said-to-leave-tillerson-in-dark-on-middle-east-talks) and (in Newsweek!!!) "Jared Kushner Failed to Disclose He Led a Foundation Funding Illegal Israeli Settlements Before U.N. Vote" (the real foreigninfluence you aren't supposed to notice) and (more vigorously directly to the point) "Double Standard: Court Jew Kushner Failed To Disclose Donations To Illegal Israeli Settlements" (Cicero). Not disturbing Ivanka remains the crucial problem for Trump, MAGA, and America.

"Haim Saban, now fellating Jared Kushner for his "pro-Israel" devotion, had a direct line to the highest echelons of the Hillary campaign"

Haim isn't Khazar! Contrast: "Israeli interviewer shreds Jared Kushner for inept Mideast team: ‘A bunch of orthodox Jews who have no idea’" (note how misleading and clumsy the headline is!) and "Clinton mega-donor Saban thanks Kushner for ‘collusion’ on Israel’s behalf" (now that's how you write a headline!). See also: "Jared Kushner at Saban Forum: Israel Needs Peace With Palestinians Before It Can Form Alliance With Arab States" ('peace with' means 'stomping down hard on', which isn't new, and has been the plan for over 100 years).

"Opinion: The US-Israeli Gang of Trump, Netanyahu and Kushner" (Stehling).

"Netanyahu: "Obviously there are some important differences between Nazi Germany and the Islamic Republic of Iran, but both regimes do have two important things in common. One, a Ruthless commitment to impose tyranny and terror. And second, a ruthless commitment to murder Jews.""

"Joe Lieberman just thanked Tom Friedman for his radioactive MBS column. "I think you've affected public opinion here in a very constructive way." He added: it may be the "most important column" you've ever written"

"How A Dubious BBC Report Gave Israel The "Green Light" For Last Night's Attack On Syria" (Durden). Fairly straightforward - Israel produces phony intelligence, washes it through (((friends))) at the BBC to provide 'objectivity', and then tries to start a war - to distract Israel from Bibi's corruption problems - on the basis of the washed phony report. What is interesting is that Israel, after the incident with the F-35, now seems to fear Syrian air defense.

"How did Yemen's Houthi-Saleh alliance collapse?" Sounds like Salman got to Saleh, probably on Kissinger's advice, funneled through Kushner. As bad as this is - and it will fail, as Saleh has no power - at least it shows some craft.

Pakistan has been corrupted by its connections to the Saudis (but wisely has stayed out of the Yemen mess): "Sucking Up to the Saudis" (Zakaria).

Lawfare is essentially the illegal forced extra-territorial application of American law by Khazar traitors (Hello, Newman!), and it is good somebody called them out on it: "Erdogan Says U.S. Sanctions on Iran Weren't Binding for Turkey".

"How Trump Botched Iran Policy" (Pillar). Hardliners in each country feed off each other's stupidity.

"What the Republican Tax Bill Portends for the Future" (Welsh). I tire of hearing that Republican grasping is (eventually) going to lead to the glorious revolution. I blame psychoactive drugs for the passivity. The 0.1% has finally found the holy grail of how to take everything without provoking a backlash. Climate change inactivity - whatever, dude - and robots taking all the jobs - whatever, dude - and AI taking over the world - what's that, dude? - are more evidence. The invention of ADHD, and the normalization of chemical-induced stupor from childhood, leading to a 'normal' lifetime of deadening by drugs, was the key. Positive change has to come from places not pharmaceuticaled up the wazoo.

"Pamela Anderson Reportedly Tried To Get Mike Pence To Pardon Julian Assange". The problem is getting Pence to commit the mortal sin of being in the same room with her.

It pays to increase your word power: pretendians. The only people who seem to care about Warren passing herself off are the non-pretendians.

"MSNBC Host Joy Reid Wrote Numerous Anti-Gay Articles on Her Old Blog"!

"And Then They Came for Opera Conductor James Levine" (Sailer). Another notorious character known for years to gossipers, and for years by management and donors to the Met, but covered up until it could be covered up no more.

"Bryan Singer Has Stepped Away From The Freddie Mercury Biopic Due To “Illness”" (Dlisted). See also: "Blind item #3" (CDaN).

To me, the most striking case is Terry Richardson. For years, the (((fashion houses))) would specifically request the (((editors))) of the (((fashion magazines))) to insist on (((Richardson))) as their photographer for fashion shoots, as only he could provide the 'edgy' look they insisted on. This 'edgy' look consisted of putting obviously under-aged women - well, girls - in sexual situations, either simulated or actual, up to and including rape. This activity was notorious in the gossip columns, as the models, some of whom became famous, complained about it constantly, but were out of that job, and out of modelling altogether, if they refused his advances. It was as if there was a three foot circle around (((Richardson))) where the normal laws of sexual assault and rape didn't apply, and (((everybody))) in power just smirked about it, as he produced the 'look'.

Sunday, December 03, 2017

Tweet (Yasha Levine) (remember when Newt was the acknowledged 'expert' on such things?):

"Ha-ha. "They" (that's the US government) gave the Internet to corporations in late 1980s. If you want to be a pendant about it, Internet privatization as a very specific policy plan by the NSF began in 1987 and concluded in 1995. PS: Almost no one knows this, though.Ha-ha. "They" (that's the US government) gave the Internet to corporations in late 1980s. If you want to be a pendant about it, Internet privatization as a very specific policy plan by the NSF began in 1987 and concluded in 1995. PS: Almost no one knows this, though."

"In my experience, more American lefties know about the privatization of Yeltsin's Russia than they do about the privatization of the Internet that happened right here in America, under their noses. (That included me until I recently.)"

"The Crypto- Keepers: How the politics-by-app hustle conquered all" (Levine) (on how the 'security' fetishists, led by Snowden, replaced politics with tech technique):

"Back in 2013, it seemed like we could be on the verge of a global movement that would galvanize people to push for meaningful privacy laws that would not only curb government surveillance, but put limits on Silicon Valley’s unrestricted data collection practices, as well. But things went a different way.

Now, four years after the Snowden leak, we can see that all that energy and outrage and potential for civic action has been redirected into a narrow band of mass-politics-by-app. The new consensus, bruited loudly in and around Silicon Valley, holds that all we need to do to protect ourselves from surveillance is download whatever crypto chat app is in vogue at the moment, and run it on our iPhones. Instead of finding political and democratic solutions to the government and corporate surveillance crisis plaguing our society, the privacy movement somehow ended up in a libertarian rut. In remarkably short order, online privacy advocates had abandoned the idea that people and politics could change the world for the better, and instead chased something closer to an NRA fantasy: the idea that if everyone was equipped with a crypto weapon powerful enough, they could single-handedly take on both corporations and powerful spy agencies like the NSA. They could use technology to guarantee their own privacy on their own terms.

Edward Snowden himself has been the principal promoter of this idea, never missing an opportunity to tell people that collective politics is useless, and that arming yourself with technology is where it’s at. He shrugged off the for-profit surveillance that powered the businesses of Silicon Valley, pithily telling the Washington Post that “Twitter doesn’t put warheads on foreheads.” Instead, he saw private companies like Apple and Facebook as allies—perhaps the only places that offered even a modicum of safety in the dangerous wilderness of the internet. To him, private developers and software engineers were the true protectors of the people, and he called on them to rise up against government oppression. “If you want to build a better future, you’re going to have to do it yourself. Politics will take us only so far and if history is any guide, they are the least reliable means of achieving the effective change . . . at the end of the day, law is simply letters on a page. They’re not gonna jump up and protect your rights,” he told the audience at Fusion’s 2016 Real Future Fair in Oakland via video-robot link from Moscow. To Snowden—now a leaker-
turned-political-philosopher—political movements and collective action were fickle, merely human endeavors that offered no guarantees; encryption and computer technology was a sure thing, based on the laws of math and physics. “Technology works differently than law,” the fugitive leaker told the crowd at the Real Future Fair. “Technology knows no jurisdiction.”

It was an absurd position. Substitute “technology” with “assault rifle” and Snowden’s speech turns into something you’d hear at a Republican CPAC conference. Still, Snowden got a standing ovation at the Real Future Fair. And why not? From the moment Snowden appeared on the scene, his tech-centric worldview has been backed up by a chorus of award-winning journalists, privacy activists, left-leaning think-tankers, and powerful advocacy groups like the Electronic Freedom Foundation and the ACLU. Silicon Valley supported Snowden’s call to arms, as well. A brave new cohort of app developers backed very narrow technological privacy solutions that they claimed would protect their users from government snooping, all while shamelessly tracking these very same users for private profit and gain.

As it happened, Snowden’s call to encryption-arms helped inspire Pavel Durov to build Telegram. “I am far from politics and cannot lobby for a ban on total surveillance,” he wrote in October 2013, a few months after Snowden fled to Moscow and right before Durov in turn had to flee Russia. “But there is something that we as IT-entrepreneurs and programmers can do. We can develop and finance technologies aimed at making total surveillance technically impossible.”

In America, the initial movement to take the anti-surveillance fight to Silicon Valley fizzled and turned into something else that was at once bizarre and pathetic: privacy activists working with Google and Facebook to fight the NSA with privacy technology. This made precisely as much sense as siding with Blackwater (or Xe or Acadami or whatever the Pentagon contractor calls itself now) against the U.S. Army. Yet this trend of politics-by-app went into overdrive after Donald Trump was elected president. You saw it everywhere: civil libertarians, privacy advocates, and demoralized liberals arose to proclaim that encryption—even the stuff rolled out by Silicon Valley surveillance giants—was the only thing that could protect us from a totalitarian Trump administration.

“Trump Is President. Now Encrypt Your Email,” urged New York magazine’s technology editor Max Read in an opinion piece published in the New York Times in March. “In the weeks after Donald J. Trump won the election, a schism threatened to break my group of friends in two. Not a political argument brought about by the president-elect, or a philosophical fight over the future of the country, but a question of which app we should be using to chat. . . .” Buzzfeed concurred: “Here’s How To Protect Your Privacy In Trump’s America: Easy tips to shield yourself from expanded government surveillance,” wrote the outlet, offering its millennial readers a listicle guide to “going dark” on the net."

and (the punchline, of course, is that the 'security' isn't secure, and has been made and backdoored by the very people you think you are hiding from!):

"Over the next several years, the BBG, backed by the State Department, expanded the Internet Freedom initiative into a $50 million a year program funding hundreds of projects targeting countries across the world—China, Cuba, Vietnam, and Russia. And here things, yet again, took a turn for the surreal: the Internet Freedom apparatus was designed to project power abroad—yet it also emerged as the primary mover and shaker in America’s domestic privacy movement. It funded activists and privacy researchers, worked with the EFF and ACLU and even companies like Google. Wherever you looked, privacy tools funded by this agency dominated the scene. That included the most ardently promoted privacy products now on offer: Tor, the anonymous internet browsing platform that powers what’s known as the “dark web,” and Signal, the chat app championed by Edward Snowden. Both of them took in millions in government cash to stay afloat."

Signal, what the experts, including CIA-asset Snowden, encourage you to use for 'security': "Invented by a self-styled radical cryptographer who goes by the name of Moxie Marlinspike (although his real name may or may not be Matthew Rosenfeld or Mike Benham), Signal was brought to life with funding from the BBG-supported Open Technology Fund (which has pumped in almost $3 million since 2013), and appears to rely on continued government funding for survival.":

"But for an app designed to hide people from the prying eyes of the U.S. government, Signal’s architecture has given some security and crypto experts pause. Its encryption algorithm is supposed to be flawless, but the app’s backend runs as a cloud service on Amazon, which is itself a major CIA contractor. The program also requires that users connect the app to a real mobile phone number and give access to their entire address book—strange behavior for an app that is supposed to hide people’s identities. Signal also depends on Google and Apple to deliver and install the app on people’s phone, and both of those companies are surveillance partners of the NSA. “Google usually has root access to the phone, there’s the issue of integrity. Google is still cooperating with the NSA and other intelligence agencies,” wrote Sander Venema, a developer who trains journalists on security. “I’m pretty sure that Google could serve a specially modified update or version of Signal to specific targets for surveillance, and they would be none the wiser that they installed malware on their phones.” And given Signal’s narrow marketing to political activists and journalists, the app works like a flag: it might encrypt messages, but it also tags users as people with something to hide—a big fat sign that says: “WATCH ME, PLEASE.”

And anyway, Signal or no Signal, if your enemy was the United States government, it didn’t really matter what crypto app you used. A recent dump of CIA hacking-tool documents published by WikiLeaks revealed that the agency’s Mobile Devices Branch has developed all sorts of goodies to grab phone data, even when it’s quarantined by the firewalls of apps like Signal and WhatsApp or even Telegram. “These techniques permit the CIA to bypass the encryption of WhatsApp, Signal, Telegram, Wiebo, Confide, and Cloackman by hacking the ‘smart’ phones that they run on and collecting audio and message traffic before encryption is applied,” wrote WikiLeaks."

The main problem for the keepers of the Panopticon is too much information. The NSA would have to hire half the world's population to monitor the conversations of the other half! What do you do if you are sitting on 45,000,000 conversations of two grandmothers discussing chocolate chip cookie recipes, one of which is two terrorists discussing bomb making in code? Simple. You let the terrorists winnow themselves out by providing 'security' apps that only the paranoid will bother to use. Now you have 45 recipe discussions, many of which are probably hinky. I don't know why this technique should be so hard to understand.

Of course, the bigger problem is when the technique of using the apps replaces real politics.

Levine is consistently one of the best writers on real politics. His Russian background seems to be clarifying.